Project: The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is arguably the most significant ocean current, its vast zonal transport linking the southern regions of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans and thus enabling a global ocean circulation. The wind-driven ACC is the only ocean current that completely encircles the polar axis, flowing eastward, unobstructed by landmasses, between 40°S-60°S. Although there are many recent studies of the ACC, the dynamics of the surface waves in the Southern Ocean remains largely unexplored when working with rotating spherical coordinates, a setting that is adequate to capture the global dynamics. Such a study is the aim of our project. In particular, we aim to construct fully-nonlinear solutions of the corresponding equations with the aid of bifurcation theory and investigate in detail their structural properties.

Dates of stay: July 5 - 25 and September 16 - 26, 2025

Research Team: Adrian Constantin (U of Vienna), Vladimir Kozlov (Linköping U), Evgeniy Lokharu (Lund U), Jörg Weber (U of Vienna)